Chicks to Chickens.

Goodness, we have a variety of feathered friends on our farm now.  So many that my husband looked at me one night, with the most serious eyes and said "No more birds, Jack.  No more birds."  Okay, so I am cut off...but that's fine. It's not like we don't have plenty.

So, what we have now are:

Baby chicks! Lots of them!  In a moment of defeat last month when our cat turned our incubator up to 117 and cooked our baby chicks, I ordered. And then in our incubator, I wasn't assuming I'd get many.  They say eggs are only viable for 10 days, I had up to 20 day old fertilized eggs that hatched just fine.  Don't believe what they say about not being viable is the lesson I learned. 

And then we have some from our last hatch.

And then a friend had one lone chick that hatched in their last incubator fail that we took in.

And then we, of course, have our adult chicks.

Current count is 49 babies and adolescents and 11 layers.

Oh my, I'm not sure how that happened. 

But it's good, it's all good. They're all in different stages and the brooders are all set up and things are going fine. Well, for right now, anyway.  I'm trying to ignore the fact that these chickens will soon outgrow the great space we have for them now.  And I'm trying to stay on top of cleaning out the brooders so our house doesn't smell too much like barn. But, it does smell like barn, despite my efforts.  And these chicks are growing. We do have a second coop that we kept for the purebreds to breed, but I've been cleaning that out, getting ready for moving them all. It will all be happening soon, they grow so fast!  And goodness, they eat so much!

But being a chicken farmer is quite fun, I'd say.  We love our girls. Especially Audra.  She would love to be holding onto a chick 24/7. She'd sleep with them if we let her. She's always hugging them and talking to them. Adrian loves them too, but he likes to care for their needs, and then he's on to his other 'farming' responsibilities that he creates for himself (latest is he's been fixing his 'machinery').

Okay, so onto the fluffy chick pictures:
Our babies, part from our own incubator, part from mail order:

And our next born:

 

And our teens, goodness, they are funny looking at this stage:

 

And then our well loved layers. And our best egg collector.

 

 And one crazy chick, and her hen. Never thought I'd turn into a chicken lady.

But here I am, with quite the flock.  And I must say, I like the chicken life quite a bit.